Sequoia Capital released a memo titled "The Sequoia of Tomorrow" on X Wednesday morning, containing several surprises. The firm stated it has raised approximately $10 billion in new funds, while closing its London office, discontinuing the Arc accelerator and Scouts programs, merging its early-stage and growth teams into a single team, flattening its partnership structure, and eliminating the Monday partner meetings.
This statement looks to the future, but the message it conveys feels more like a return to an earlier state: a smaller team, more focused on Silicon Valley.
Sequoia Capital itself has clearly stated this. The firm said that over the past roughly 20 years, Sequoia underwent a period of expansion, establishing multiple businesses across various regions, and an unintended side effect was the growth of hierarchy. Nearly all of the arrangements now being revoked were established during that period under successive leaders including Doug Leone, Jim Goetz, and Roelof Botha.
One of the most surprising changes here is that Sequoia has discontinued two of its programs closest to young founders. The Scouts program, launched around 2009, was widely rumored to have been replicated in some form by half the industry. The program issued small checks to founders and operators to invest on Sequoia’s behalf, enabling Sequoia to discover deals through individuals closer to emerging founders, rather than relying solely on partners to make direct connections. Jason Calacanis used this program to introduce Uber to Sequoia. Sam Altman also brought Stripe to Sequoia as a scout. Earlier scouts included Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, and Dropbox founders Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston.
The Arc project, launched in March 2022, is Sequoia’s response to Y Combinator: a batch-based accelerator for pre-seed and seed-stage founders, running several cohorts annually, each lasting seven weeks, with selected companies receiving upfront funding of $500,000 to $1 million.
Both projects were bets on “earlier” and “ubiquitous.” Now, Sequoia says it wants to focus more on fewer people and things.
The London office will also close. Sequoia opened the office in London in 2020, and several people will leave the company as a result. The memo stated: “We simply don’t see the need for a local presence.” The company added that Europe will still produce “outlier founders,” and Sequoia can support them from the Bay Area. (If founders hadn’t already felt pressure to move to the Bay Area or open a local office, that pressure will now only increase.)
Luciana Lixandru, who joined from Accel in 2020 and became Sequoia’s first European partner, said the company offered her the opportunity to move to San Francisco, but she declined. She wrote on X: “Europe is where my family is and where I want to build my career.” She stated that she remains a partner, will retain her board seat, and will continue to invest personally in European founders.
This message is particularly hard for European founders to swallow, especially after Andreessen Horowitz closed its London office last year and Coatue scaled back in 2024. Sequoia has not said it won’t invest in European companies, but it has clearly reaffirmed that its focus has returned to the Bay Area.
This “callback” is also reflected in personnel changes. The memo notes that former Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach has returned to the team (he rejoined in March as a full-time partner). The memo also states that the team has “reactivated” GOAT Doug Leone.
Although venture capital firms inherently have diverse title structures—Sequoia is no exception—this memo clearly indicates that seven general partners currently own and operate Sequoia: co-leaders Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, along with Andrew Reed, Shaun Maguire, Konstantine Buhler, Sonya Huang, and David Cahn, who joined in 2023.
There are other changes as well. Jess Lee, Sequoia’s first female partner and an early investor in Arc, no longer appears on Sequoia’s investor page but is now listed as operations staff; she remains with the company as Chief Product Officer. Stephanie Zahn, who joined Sequoia in 2015, has fully left the firm and announced last month that she will be launching her own new company.
Sequoia rarely lets people fully leave. Founder Don Valentine continued appearing at partner meetings for about a decade after stepping down. Goetz, who stepped down from management duties in 2017, still appears on the company’s website. Botha was the exception. Last autumn, he was voted off the senior leadership role in a surprising reshuffle—which the firm described at the time as a transition to Lin and Grady—and he severed his remaining ties with Sequoia this summer, around the same time he joined SpaceX’s board.
These changes are bound to cause ripples. However, these moves are not entirely out of character for Sequoia. Sequoia frequently adapts its structure, and sometimes that means downsizing. The most prominent example was in 2023, when Sequoia split its operations in China and India/Southeast Asia, with the latter becoming Sequoia China (HongShan) and Peak XV, respectively—ending a two-decade-long global presence under a single brand across two continents.
The remainder of the memo primarily involves structural changes. The firm stated that it has decided to eliminate the separate “early-stage” and “growth” team divisions in favor of a unified operation; it will also discontinue the weekly Monday partner meeting, a common practice at Sequoia and nearly all venture capital firms. The company believes that since founders work around the clock, investors should too. (This approach may be disappearing more broadly: At last month’s Disrupt conference, during an interview with TechCrunch, the entire Benchmark team indicated that their Monday meetings are now mostly social.)
Sequoia also acknowledges that these actions come at a cost. The memo states: “Breaking something that works well is frightening,” and saying goodbye to talented people is painful. However, it will take time to determine whether these decisions were right.
The following is the full text of Sequoia's original:
We live in a world where change is accelerating. The best founders continually reinvent themselves—and so must we.
It has been a year since we completed the generational transition. We’ve been incredibly busy! We’re no longer just continuing the Sequoia of yesterday—we’re building the Sequoia of tomorrow.
Here are some of the changes we’ve made and what they mean for founders.
Focus: What we do best is high-conviction, highly selective venture investing. That’s our priority. We’ve significantly reduced the complexity associated with the Sequoia Capital Fund, discontinued the batch accelerator programs Arc and Scouts, and streamlined our operations and investment teams. Focusing more energy on fewer people and initiatives means we can better support the founders we invest in.
A single team, with no distinction between “early” and “growth.” Only Sequoia. We are one team operating under a shared mission. This should make it smoother for founders to transition between stages.
London: We will be closing our London office, which means a few people will be leaving Sequoia. This is not a reflection on the team—they are outstanding. We simply don’t see the need for a local presence. We believe Europe will continue to produce extraordinary founders and companies, and we can continue to provide world-class support from our headquarters in the Bay Area.
Partners, we are emerging from a roughly 20-year period of expansion during which we built multiple businesses across several regions. An unintended side effect was the growth of layers; running operations required real management, and this permeated into the investment team. We’ve made several internal adjustments that have flattened the partnership structure. This enables each partner to operate at their full potential and ensures every founder receives the full support of Team Sequoia—regardless of your lead partner.
We’ve welcomed two rising stars (Liam and Sonali) and a highly talented founder-operator (Dev). We’ve reunited with a legendary leader (Carl) and reactivated GOAT (Doug). We’ve also promoted and empowered several outstanding operators: Hem, Natalie, Rishi, Stacey, and Theresa. We’ve raised approximately $10 billion in new capital. Talent and capital are the two critical ingredients for building legendary companies. Our talent density and capital base have never been stronger.
No more Monday partner meeting cycles—24/7. Founders operate around the clock, and so do we. Founders shouldn’t have to adapt to our processes—we’ll do our best to adapt to yours.
Reinventing ourselves—some of these changes are obvious, while others are less so. Many have been difficult. Breaking something that was working well is frightening, and saying goodbye to talented people is painful. We ask our founders to do the right thing even in tough times, and we commit to doing the same.
Some things remain unchanged. Our mission is to help daring individuals build legendary companies—from idea to IPO and beyond. Our objective is not scale, but quality: delivering the best possible returns to our LPs and becoming founders’ best partners.
Sequoia Excellence tomorrow is a moving target, so we will continue to evolve. But for now,
We are a team of seven general partners who jointly own and operate this firm, and we’re taking proactive steps to build our business so that we can support you in building yours. We are true believers; as we enter a golden age marked by multiple simultaneous structural transformations—AI, space, biotech, reindustrialization, and perhaps more—we are incredibly excited about what’s ahead. Let’s build something legendary together!
— Alfred, Andrew, David, Konstantine, Pat, Shaun, and Sonya, representing Team Sequoia